Login issue...
An odd one, I haven't run into before. A 2008 27 iMac was updated to 10.9.5 yesterday, and when it came back up, no user could log in. It accepts the username and password, the little spinny gear starts right up, and that's as far as it gets, never goes off the login screen. Verbose boot shows no unusual notices. Booted into recovery volume, Disk utility says the drive is OK, I even repaired permissions, nothing unusual there. Didn't fix it. Was able to get to the syslog via terminal in recovery, nothing unusual at all, in fact, nothing after the login window appears. Permissions look ok for the users directories. I haven't run Diskwarrior yet, but I'm unsure that would help, because Disk Utility thinks the volume has no errors. I'm worried that the Open Directory database may be borked. Does anyone know if that can be managed from the recovery volume, or when connected to another Mac in FW target mode? -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups iMac Group group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Login issue...
On Sep 25, 2014, at 9:06 AM, Bruce Johnson john...@pharmacy.arizona.edu wrote: An odd one, I haven't run into before. A 2008 27 iMac was updated to 10.9.5 yesterday, and when it came back up, no user could log in. It accepts the username and password, the little spinny gear starts right up, and that's as far as it gets, never goes off the login screen. Verbose boot shows no unusual notices. Booted into recovery volume, Disk utility says the drive is OK, I even repaired permissions, nothing unusual there. Didn't fix it. Was able to get to the syslog via terminal in recovery, nothing unusual at all, in fact, nothing after the login window appears. Permissions look ok for the users directories. I haven't run Diskwarrior yet, but I'm unsure that would help, because Disk Utility thinks the volume has no errors. I'm worried that the Open Directory database may be borked. Does anyone know if that can be managed from the recovery volume, or when connected to another Mac in FW target mode? -- Bruce Johnson The first 27 iMac came out in late 2009. Based on the age of the machine, I suggest running Drive Genius 3 to scan for bad sectors as well as for read/write integrity. The update may have put a critical bit of code on a bad spot on the disk, which jibes with your borked suspicion. Jim Scott Eureka, CA -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups iMac Group group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Login issue...
On Sep 25, 2014, at 9:54 AM, Jim Scott jesco...@gmail.com wrote: Also, go ahead and run DiskWarrior. It may not find any of the usual directory issues, but it may well find volume information issues. I deal almost 100% with Mac problem machines, and I frequently have found that a mysterious hang during boot or similar failure to complete the boot sequence is fixed by DW correcting a volume information issue. I don't know why this happens, but my experience is that it is a cumulative error problem that seems to be triggered by too many improper shutdowns, brownouts, etc. Well, I've made some encouraging progress. I've managed to log on! I deleted /var/db/.AppleSetupDone while booted into the recovery volume. I then created a new local admin user and, after a much longer than usual delay, got through the account creation stuff and arrived at last in the Finder, which was sluggish as heck. Checked user accounts, and according to system prefs they're all there. Fired up Activity monitor and found that opendirectoryd was consuming 365%-405% CPU. I unbound the system from our Active Directory domain, not really expecting it to work but it did. cpu load dropped to nothing. I rebooted, was able to log in as the original local admin user (woohoo! Progress!) Re-bound it to AD and boom CPU shot right back up. I unbound it again and am currently backing up the drive with CCC (conversation with professor yesterday Time Machine? What's Time Machine?) If CCC dies, I'll run DW on the original, but I'm now pretty sure my issue is a borked opendirectory database. I don't have Drive Genius, my usual weapons are CCC, Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, and, in extremis, dd and a lot of time. I've managed to recover a fair bit of data from dying HDD's using the latter, and a bucket of ice in one case, to keep the drive cool enough to work. (Admission, it was my own, un-backed-up laptop drive with some irreplaceable stuff on it. Do as I say, not as I do!) Plan going forward: I'll nukepave the iMac, restore the apps, but NOT users and computer settings from the CCC during the re-install, create a new local admin, re-bind to AD see what happens. If it doesn't go nutz again, I'll have him log on so it creates the local directory, copy over his original user directory from the backup drive, make it his actual home on the disk again and in theory he should be ok. It's amazing how often just laying my problem out in public makes my brain think of new things to try :-) -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups iMac Group group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
